Republican News · Thursday 31 January 2002

Higher walls no protection

As Gerry Adams met US Special Envoy to the north of Ireland, Richard Haas, yesterday, Wednesday 12 June, he delivered yet again Sinn Féin's message on policing: the Patten Report must be implemented in full, and the party will not settle for its dilution.

Some weeks into a loyalist pogrom on Belfast's most vulnerable nationalist enclave, the Short Strand, and the RUC/PSNI's involvement in the same, recent events have made the most compelling argument to date that further movement on policing is necessary.

This is the time of year most feared by nationalists living in vulnerable areas. The Loyal Orders' marching season arrives amid growing signs that loyalism again intends to crank up its campaign of sectarian violence.

The rising 'peace wall' in East Belfast is a testament to the 'new' police force's inability and unwillingness to protect vulnerable nationalists. It is a puny plaster on the open sore that is loyalist sectarianism, a festering growth that still pervades the Six Counties.

Keeping the communities apart is a poor excuse for the sort of community policing needed to tackle the scourge of sectarianism. The RUC/PSNI, in its current form, is not willing or equipped to do that job and remains a force viewed by many as the armed wing of unionism.

What is required, as we have said so many times before, is the new beginning to policing we were all promised in the Good Friday Agreement.